Pictures worth pondering...

The latest report,  known as “Trends in Maternal Mortality”, is jointly released by WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank

• Women in developing countries are 36 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than women in developed nations.
• Developing nations accounted for 99% of all maternal deaths, with 57% in sub-Saharan Africa and 30% in South Asia.
• The study shows progress in sub-Saharan Africa where maternal mortality decreased by 26%.
• In Asia, the number of maternal deaths is estimated to have dropped from 315000 to 139000 between 1990 and 2008, a 52% decrease.

Another passport episode

No, this time the experience is not from me, the guy who presumably has no right to speak up against Indian bureaucracy since I live abroad. This is from a successful entrepreneur from Mumbai.

http://emergic.org/2010/09/07/passport-office-part-1/
http://emergic.org/2010/09/08/passport-office-part-2/
http://emergic.org/2010/09/09/passport-office-part-3/
http://emergic.org/2010/09/10/passport-office-part-4/

Song and Dance

Have you ever heard a song, liked it and wanted to see the video of the song...? Sometime it turns out to be a mistake! Over the years it happened to me a couple of times. Some of the best songs are poorly portrayed on the screen. This one is the latest for me. I was so impressed by the poetic lyrics of the song, it drove me to hunt for the song on youtube only to become disappointed by the way the song was picturized. I don't know what is the best way to bring on screen a song so beautiful as this one, but it ain't this way. Well, close your eyes and listen to the song first and then watch it the second time, you will know what I am talking about.

If you have any such experience, please feel free to share. I almost feel like we should collect such beautiful songs and remake them just to do justice to the poetic lyrics.

One man's incredible work

A library of knowledge on various subject matter. Talent diverted from hedge fund into education.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Thank you Salman khan

My kids love this song!

SemMozhi Tamil Anthem AR.Rahman (HD) - The best video clips are here

This is what it has come down to now?!

I knew water problem was bad in India. IMHO this is an awful solution to the problem. It makes India more dependent on foreign resources especially such vital resources. This is not a sustainable solution. Instead we should explore cheaper desalination plants to convert sea water into usable water.

""Like so many other commodities, water is going global. A number of recent news articles have described water as "blue gold" and the "the oil of the 21st Century". Entrepreneurs are responding to supply and demand imbalance by seeking ways to transport water from countries and regions with plentiful amounts to areas in short supply," wrote Terry Anderson and Clay Landry of what is now known as the Property and Environment Research Center way back in 1999. "John Hayward, a water expert for the World Bank, commented that 'water will be moved around the world as oil is now.'"

25 / 5 = 14

Carnatic music lessons

There are many sites with Carnatic lessons. I find this one to have an excellent coverage of foundational materials.

http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/Homepages/shivkuma/personal/music/varnams/index.html

With materials like this and a local music teacher as a coach, students anywhere can set sail into the world of music.

Speaking of music, here is an excellent analysis of Ilayaraja's contributions to popularizing Carnatic music in films.

http://www.s-anand.net/blog/category/classical-ilayaraja/

Does everyone like you?

everyone...?! Here is a related question. Have you ever been in a position where you have to make decisions for or on behalf of others? Here is an explanation.

'Leading' is making decisions.
Making decisions is choosing between difference choices.
Choosing is rejecting some choices.
Rejection affect people who stand to gain from those choices.
People who lose by your decision usually don't like you! :-)

In an ideal world where everyone is equally smart and appreciate the rational behind decision making, everyone will like everyone else in spite of any loss to their income, prestige, fame, etc. Our world is far from ideal.

So if you are a leader, not everyone likes you. That is guaranteed.

Eating with hands!

Eating with hands is somewhat uniquely Indian. While people around the world invented tools like spoons, forks, chop sticks, etc, we are comfortable eating with our hands. What's up with that? We are bunch of smart people why didn't we invent a tool? We do use different types of spoons for cooking. So why not one for eating?

Last winter I realized an answer to this question. Even if the food is served hot in the plate, when the temperature outside is freezing, very quickly the food becomes cold. If you eat with your fingers in the freezing cold weather, you fingers start to hurt by the time you finish eating! It is pretty uncomfortable. Cold food in mouth goes down without much discomfort. But touching the cold food is not a comfortable feeling. So if you can pick up the food with a tool and drop it in your mouth, that serves as a comfortable meal. In India, we are used to warm weather all around the year. If the food is hot, let it cool for a few minutes and you can pick it up comfortably with your hands to feed yourself. So there is no need to invent a tool!

Incidentally, we have food like Dosa that is difficult to eat with a standard tool like spoon or fork, especially if it is crispy. Either we have to invent a Dosa eating tool or make bite size Dosas just like mini idlies.

People eat sandwiches here with their hands. So it is not completely an alien behavior. The thing that beats me is why the fast food sandwiches are so big that it never fits in your mouth. Eating a sandwich is a scene. You have to wide open your mouth to take a bite. Restaurants boost showing their sandwiches with a huge stack of stuff layered with some bread or bun on the outside. If I am going to pick up loosely assembled stuff to eat, I would rather pick up a bite size sandwich piece and eat it at once. Oh well.... perhaps we need to modernize our food and eating tools...?! :-)

Wisdom and Instinct

The good and bad in life are not black and white as in the movies. They are shades of grey. It is only after the fact, well into the future, you realize if something turned out good or bad. Randomness influences life in a big way. So conventional wisdom is subjective and sometimes one has to completely ignore it. Here are few examples of how some famous people ignored their stumbling blocks and got ahead to make history simply by following their instincts.

"Children just aren't interested in Witches and Wizards anymore." - Anonymous publishing executive to J.K. Rowling, 1996.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros. 1927.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." - Decca Records executives rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"You better get secretarial work or get married." - Emmeline Snively, Director, Blue Book Modelling Modelling Agency, to Marilyn Monroe in 1944.

"The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad." - The President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language." - The San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a submission by Rudyard Kipling in 1889.

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." - Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

"The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most." - IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.

Fascinating Facts - The floating Earth

As you may know, Einstein's general theory of relativity completely changed the way we think about space and time. Instead of objects sitting in space as time tics and tocs, objects distort and interact with space and time together. The theory predicts that earth, stars and other galactic objects bend the space around them.


NASA’s Gravity Probe B satellite proved the theory's predictions. 
http://einstein.stanford.edu/SPACETIME/spacetime4.html Don't miss the great video explanations on the link.

Here's looking at you, kid...

Naked eye view of Earth from Mars - sent by Mars Rover Spirit

Leaf blower cleans dryer vent

If you understand the title, skip to the second paragraph of this article. Unlike in India where there is abundant sun throughout the year to dry washed cloths outdoor, in the North East United States indoor cloth drying equipments are a necessity. Washing machines and dryers are standard equipments in every household. Natural gas or electricity is used as heating source for the dryers. Hot air is blown in a chamber where wet cloths spin. The air absorbs moisture in the cloths and leave out of the equipment and the house through an exhaust pipe. Duct work to let the hot air exit out of the building is part of standard plumbing. When clothes dry at high temperature most fabrics leave behind fluffy cotton lint in the dryer and the exhaust vent. One of the leading causes of house fire in the U.S is the fire caused by overheated dryer vents.

Recently, I was reminded of a house fire of a colleague because of clogged dryer vent. It was time to cleanup the dryer vent since I haven't done that ever. There are ton of products out there that are meant to clean the dryer vents. I picked up one of those and found it was pretty inefficient. Brush attached to a long flexible cord goes hardly two feet inside the vent. Beyond that it is impossible to push the brush since there is no strong hold and the cord bends instead of pushing the brush inside the vent. Then I tried using the vacuum cleaner. Again I could clean up about two feet on both ends of the vent, but much of the lint is in the middle around the bend of the vent, I could see it with a flash light. After much frustration, I was about to give up.

In a flash of thought, it occurred to me to try using my leaf blower from one end. Viola! That worked like magic

The blower pushes the lint in the vent from one end and moves it out through the other leaving the vent nice and clean. The job was well done in few seconds. Not knowing how efficient this will be I ended up having to vacuum the inside of the house near the dryer where the dirt piled up. Next time I am planning to tie a plastic bag or something on the dryer end of the vent to reduce the mess. Or perhaps I should try blowing air from the dryer end.

Well, turns out Leaf blowers are much more powerful compared to the dryer fans. Long time back I learned that with the right tools, any work can get done with much less effort and incredibly well. Apparently, sometimes we have to find the right tool ourselves.

Winter and Ear Infection

Right from the childhood I have suffered from ear infections during winter. Had my tonsils removed long ago. Yet, I had to suffer through every winter at least once, sometimes more than once when the temperature remains below comfortable level. I have knocked the doors of many a specialists, internal medicine, ENT, family practice, etc. Once an ENT specialist wanted to eliminate the possibility of a tumor growth inside nostrils and subjected me to a thin tube insertion with camera and light on one end to look inside. Nothing came up out of norm. One treatment option went like this. We should put a hole in the ear drum and fix a pipe to drain the fluid that builds up around your sinus during cold temperature. This tube will be a permanent artificial fixture inside the head and prevent ear infections! Well, I wasn't sure I wanted to go for that. An internal medicine doc prescribed a nasal spray that you point in an oblique angle inside the nose and spray twice a day. A side effect of that was that it makes you addictive to using it for ever. Other than that I didn't see it work at all. And the worst of all, every time I suffered from the ear infection, I had to be on one full dose of Antibiotics that ran for 30 days a course. That means, for more than half of winter every year I was on antibiotics! The antibiotic is not a preventive medicine; it did not reduce the pain, it just helped prevent further infection, I guess. So, this gave me one more reason to hate winters!

Early this winter, I was at a local Target (a supermarket chain) and spotted a ear muffler. It looks something like the figure shown.

Every time I went out, I wore the muff. It worked like magic! Apparently, my body is sensitive to cold air getting inside the ear canal and reacts by pushing the ear drum from inside. The pressure develops into prolonged pain, redness in the inner ear and thus infection. As soon as the ear muff blocked cold air from getting inside the ear canal, it relieved me of my long lasting problem! What a simple world, that we complicate by over thinking. For the first time in many winters, I am free of ear infections this year and it happened just by pure luck! I am so thankful I found this little contraption that has improved my quality of life tremendously.

IIT lectures online!

http://www.youtube.com/iit

Wealth of knowledge!

Science, Engineering and Technology

Simple minded message


Science can be viewed as a self-correcting process of observation, hypothesis, and test.

whereas

Engineering can be viewed as a self-correcting process of observation, design and test.

while

Technology can be viewed as the wherewithal or state of the art produced by the practice of science and engineering.

- Abstract from A Discourse on Winning and Losing by John Boyd.

Can death be treated?

Can we treat someone out of death? Granted we don't know when the moment comes. But when an individual is old, lived a full dignified, happy life, laboring in the last moment of life, should the individual be "treated" with ventilator, dialysis, blood transfusion, CT Scans, heavy dose of medications, etc.? The cardiologists, the neurologists, the nephrologists and other specialists give their expert opinion on the condition of the individual body part heart, brain, kidney etc., Life inside is fighting back to make an exit..Unfortunately this situation is not unique to our honorable leader Mr. Jyothi Basu who is in his death bed right now.

A Doctor comments the following on the condition of Mr. Jyothi Basu in The Times of India forum.
"He is 96 years old. The life expectancy of someone born in India in 1914 would have been less than half of that, and almost 100 years later, most Indians (and most humans) don't live that long. While the media is reporting all the "heroic" efforts the doctors are making, and all the technology they are throwing at a frail elderly man, nobody seems to care to ask if he would have approved of his body being put through all this invasion and indignity. He has multiorgan failure over age related decline in organ function. An elderly person in this condition is unlikely to recover his previous cognitive and functional status. Isn't it time to allow natural death?"

With the help of modern medicine, we take extraordinary measures to prolong life at all costs. Our hospital Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have made death invisible even to the closest family members. The patient almost always has no say on how they want to pass. As a culture, we are growing ignorant of letting go our near and dear gracefully and with dignity.

Tamil poet கவிப்பேரரசு வைரமுத்து (Vairamuthu) in his collection of poems "இந்த பூக்கள் விற்பனைக்கு அல்ல" writes as follows in the poem "வேண்டுவன"

"...
கடைசிவரை
சுயமாய் நீர் கழிக்கும் சுகம்
உறக்கத்தில் உயிர் பிரியும் வரம்"

(The wants - Being able to urinate without aid; to die in sleep)

Even if one is not lucky to pass while asleep, wouldn't it be wonderful if one remains conscious, meets with all loved ones to say that they love them and they forgive them, labor through the dying process, just as it happens during birth and finally depart?! Wouldn't it bring a sense of closure on a life, not only to those who die, but also to those who live to remember them? Is there is a better way to end a great journey of life? Should a life go in the dark, alone, unconscious and surrounded by strangers? I have seen one too many to go the same route. Now we see the drama being played out in the media for Mr. Jyothi Basu. May him rest in peace when the time comes. India will miss a great leader of the people.

An amazing sight

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Decibels and Octaves

Happy New Year everyone. It has been a while since I blogged last. Sometime back I started learning Piano. That was my first introduction to world of music - theory and composition. As you may know already, a Piano has several white keys with black keys spread between them. The arrangement has a repetitive symmetry to it, even a casual observer would notice. Little did I know that there were fundamentally just 12 keys - 7 white and 5 black - collectively called as an 'octave' and this set is 'kinda' repeated over and over throughout the piano. Not quite repeated, but a key in one octave will emit a sound of frequency exactly twice as that of the corresponding key in the previous octave. And as for the relationship between keys within the same octave - it is quite simple - since you do not want an abrupt transition when you go from one octave to another, the 2nd key in an octave has a frequency (f2), that is the frequency of the 1st key (f1) multiplied by 12th root of 2. i.e. f2 = f1*(2^-12). This is so that automatically when we reach the first key of the next octave, which can be referred to as (f13), we have f13 = f1*(2^-12)^12 = f1*2 - Thus 1st key of next octave has frequency twice as much as that of the 1st key of this octave - therefore no abrupt transitions in frequency and at the same time an octave is doubled in frequency as it is repeated over.

Since the intention of this blog is not to give you a lesson in music, let me get to the point. When I first heard the term 'octave' while learning Piano, I didn't think about it too much - but it did ring bells in my subconscious mind. One day I was working at my office dealing with a measurement which used log2. When I was comparing one value with another one, I was writing down in my record book, "2nd measurement is one octave higher than the 1st one" - oops, 'octave'!! Now I remembered - in engineering like we use 'decibels' as units when we refer to a log10 value, we use 'octaves' when we use log2. The etymology of 'decibel' is known - it is from Graham Bell, an unit often used to measure sound as Graham Bell invented the sound device of telephone. But in college I always wondered where 'octave' came from - because what has log'2' in common with number 8 ('oct'ave)? Well it is all clear new - every '8'th white key in a piano will belong to the next 'oct'ave, that will have a frequency 'twice' as much as the 1st white key. In other words, if we take two white keys of frequencies fx and fy and compared them logarithmically, and if log2(fy/fx) = 4 then one white key is 4 'oct'aves away from the other. Well, people were measuring sound long before they even heard of electricity - I guess they used the same units they used for sound, which they were familiar with, when they started measuring electricity first.

After all that being said, I still have no clue why an octave contains 12 keys (why not, say, 14?). It might hit me someday!

Why does it snow?

My daughter asked that question today. It snowed about 3 inches and I was blowing away the snow on the drive way. My kids were excited to come out and play on the snow. They were running around on the lawn covered with the white stuff, making snow man, making snow ball to throw at each other. They always have a blast when it snows. But I have to make sure the drive way is clean so we can get the car out easily.

When I heard that question, in my own geeky way I asked her back the questions, well...why does it rain? why is there an ocean? why do plants grow? why are we here? She looked at me strangely and said, so we don't know any of those? I nodded with a smile. She replied quickly, as if it was pretty obvious to her. "I think it snows so children can play and grownups can get a work out!" She went back to play. That was good enough answer for her! :-)

Try, Win, Quit

We have all heard about the importance of trying hard and not quitting. There are inspirational poems and quotes about not quitting. But do you know that quitting is a constant companion of winners!?

In Seth Godin’s book, The Dip, he reveals the truth about quitting: “In a free market, we reward the exceptional. Everyone picks the best one when given a choice. And the people who are perceived as the best get rewards that dwarf the people who are third and fourth and fifth.” So, being average is same as losing! One has to quit or be exceptional. So, winners DO quit, after all!

It is "try, win, quit" ideally. But often times, "try, quit,..., try, win, quit" is also a norm. As a saying goes, "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook"!

The reality of Indian agriculture

The situation is not good! Not that it is any surprise to those who keep up with the news of farmers committing suicide in different villages often times. But I didn't realize the profession is like a slow poison in every farmer's life until my recent visit to India. When I talk to the folks in agriculture, most of them seem to have no clue that they are in a financial quick sand. On the other hand, with poor literacy in villages, the farmers seem to have no option but to live in a no win situation. The situation is really bad for those who are 100% relying on agriculture as their sole family income.

I see three groups of people in agriculture.
1. The passive income group
2. The farmers group and
3. The hopeless group!

The passive income group is a working class of people who have a job or primary income from sources other than agriculture and have farming as a passive income producing source. They are passionate about investing in agriculture most likely because they grew up in an agricultural family environment. They are not directly involved in farming. But have someone close to the farms (farmers group) take care of agriculture while they make their living in cities. Almost always the indulgence of this group in agriculture is an emotional decision to retain the family tradition or to maintain the inherited agricultural fields. They are not making profit in the investment. They are not hurt by the loss either. Some of them are under the illusion that their agricultural investments are profitable short term investments. Two concepts in financial management prove otherwise - the risk and the opportunity cost.

The passive income group puts forward an argument for agriculture that goes like this. If I invest one lakh rupee in agriculture, I get 1.5 lakh in about 6 to 8 months. That is probably true. Can't argue with numbers. There are three nuances in this argument though.

1. To begin with, one has to come up with a significant amount of money to invest in agriculture as a down payment before harvesting the returns. Luckily this group of people are able to do that on their own and avoid the "cost of capital" burden in terms of payment of interest and principal on that investment cost. The other two groups unfortunately are not as lucky.

2. The return is not guaranteed and depends on many factors like the rain/water level in the well, monsoon fluctuations, seasonal pests, etc. There is no systemic protection such as insurance against any of these factors. The biggest risk however is that the producers have no control over the price of their produce! Invariably when the volume of production is high, prices are down and when the volume is less, prices are moderate to high. So profit is shot always as Profit = Price*Quantity produced - Sunk Costs. Price is set by the "commission" shops who are traders of the produce. When the price is artificially controlled against the supply-demand dynamics and the costs are ever increasing because of the increasing labor, fertilizer, pesticide costs, profit becomes very unreliable. So there is enormous risk in the agricultural investment. Higher the risk, higher should be the expected reward.

3. In addition, if you look around to invest that initial expense in a bank FD or gold or residential land or some other investment what is the potential return? That is the opportunity cost. (Of course, each one of those alternatives come with a risk profile)

If you take the opportunity cost, add a markup for the risk factors and adjust for inflation (by the way, that goes up almost every year. Rs. 100 last year is worth less than Rs.100 this year) you should expect a return that exceeds the actual return consistently year over year. But that calculation is never considered by this group. Neither do they keep record of their investment and return over a long period of time to study the performance of their investment against alternatives. They write off the sunk costs if it comes to that and continue to go on. Well good for us! Without this group, agriculture is doomed in India.

That's a lot for now. More on the other two groups who are worse off than the first group. At least this group can sustain the losses and continue to invest in agriculture. The other two groups can not.

Hilarious!

A.D to C.E

Recently I came across a year notation like "6th century B.C.E" and I was lost. What is B.C.E? Turns out when I was not looking, the calendar convention B.C and A.D., which we were taught in the schools was changed to B.C.E and C.E.

The use of C.E.—signifying "Common Era" apparently has become popular in recent decades. As Christians and others have become increasing aware that Christianity is not the only Western tradition, it has made sense to many to switch the designation of dates from A.D. (Anno Domini meaning in the year of the Lord) to C.E., and thus also from B.C. ("Before Christ") to B.C.E. ("Before the Common Era").

Well. Perhaps we should close the history books on Y2K and start afresh on a new scientific era (S.E). Let's get ready for 10 S.E folks!
:-)

Baldness and Malaria

Do you know that the ratio of amount spent annually on treating baldness Vs treating malaria is 50 to 1?

Malaria kills about a million people in Africa and Asia every year. Yet, it does not offer an attractive market opportunity for businesses to invest capital to address the issue. On the other hand, baldness affects rich old men who care to look young. This customer is willing and able to spend considerable amount of money to get cure for baldness. They have enough disposable income that presents an attractive market opportunity for businesses to go after!

- From Bill Gates speech on TED.org

Tamiflu / Antiflu

In the pharma industry, to bring a product to market is no easy task. There is a huge stage-gate process during drug development and a lengthy clinical trial for the FDA approval. A high investment in R&D is required and the failure rate of products is very high. So to protect the industry, U.S. grants patents on drugs that offer exclusive right for the pharma company to make, sell and reap the rewards of the innovation for a 20 year period. So it only takes one or two succesful drugs for pharma companies to sustain and generate a rate of return that is acceptable to the investors. Having said that, Pharma industry makes above average return in general and considered as one of the attractive investment opportunities.

In 1970, India put into place a series of policies aimed at moving the country towards self sufficiency in medicines. At this time, the national sector was less than 25% of the domestic pharmaceutical market. Of the top ten firms by retail sales, only two where Indian firms and the rest were subsidiaries of multinationals. Much of the country's pharmaceutical consumption was met by imports. Most of the Indian population could not afford the imported medicine and millions of people were dying because medicines were not affordable. The national sentiment on this issue is well captured by the Indira Gandhi's statement at the world health assembly in 1982, "The idea of a better-ordered world is one in which medical discoveries will be free of patents and there will be no profiteering from life and death"

India passed the Patents Act 1970 that greatly weakened intellectual property protection in India, particularly for pharmaceutial products. Pharmaceutical innovations as well as those of food and agro-chemicals become un-patentable, allowing innovations patented elsewhere to be freely copied and marketed in India. Supported by this regulatory environment, by 1991, Indian firms accounted for 70% of the bulk drugs sold in India.

Of course, this issue which is identified as TRIPs (Trade Related aspects of Intellectual property rights) has been one of the main issues of contention at GATT summits for a long time.

Fast forward to the present day. The one company (Roche) that manufactures Tamiflu could not manufacture and supply enough quantity for this U.S. national H1N1 flu emergency. Tamiflu patent is valid until 2016. Indian pharma company Cipla has a generic drug that it reverse engineered from Tamiflu, called Antiflu, and Cipla is ready to step in to meet the demand. Center for disease control (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are considering bringing in Antiflu into the U.S market.

For a long time, the developed nations condemned India as a pirate. Indian government acted to make life saving medicines affordable to its millions. Weighing the Return on Investment of Pharma companies on one hand and the life of millions of people on the other, the choice of Indian government is not surprising. Now U.S is made to choose between those same two choices. Should be interesting to see the U.S. decision.

Craftspeople and Seers

Craftspeople are highly skilled experts in the practice of one's craft. Master craftspeople are best students when they were in the school. They are excellent problem solvers. In the normal period of work, you need crafts people to run the business smooth. Lot of people fall into this category.

Seers are creative rebels with rare talent. Seers are capable of ferreting out wrong assumptions or ask the right questions. Seers are highly trained, but need not be technically as proficient as craftspeople. Seers are dreamers. During revolutionary periods, you need seers, who can peer ahead into the darkness.

The prime example of a Seer is Einstein. He couldn't get a decent job as a scientist when he was young, slow in argument, easily confused; others were much better at mathematics. Einstein said to have remarked, "It's not that I am so smart. It's just that I stay with the problems longer."

Like anything, there are exceptions to this categorization. Isaac Newton is both an extraordinary visionary and the best mathematician of his day. Almost everything about Newton is singular and inexplicable.

- Derived from the book "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin

Capitalistic vision Vs "Too big to fail" policy

The following is a powerful visionary statement of the CEO Arthur Jenson to the mad television anchor Mr. Beale in the movie 'Network' (yr 1976 - great movie to watch!).

(In a loud dramatic voice!) "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, Yen, Rubles, Pounds, and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

(Soft voice) Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

(Loud again) You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused"

- From the movie Network (1976)


Is this capitalistic vision doomed by the current worldwide economic crisis? We are certainly bitten by the "Too big to fail" policy. "Governments" had to bail out big banks and corporations all over the world.

The notion of separation of State and Business (Wall Street) is not working, is it?! Ayn Rand's school of thought subscribed to by such stalwarts as Alan Greenspan that "unregulated market will take care of itself" has caused this "moral hazard" where in tax payers ended up paying for the mistakes of big businesses.

When religion was mixed with the State, it caused havoc in the earlier centuries. Separation of State and Religion policy eliminated the influence of religious leaders in the Government. Right now, there is a revolving door arrangement between Wall Street and Washington. Ex-Wall Street CEOs go into policy making to work as part of the government and retired politicians work for Wall Street as lobbyists for businesses. This arrangement has badly hurt the people all over the world but benefited Wall Street and the politicians handsomely.

Where do we go from here? Is this a passing phase? Is closing the revolving door possible? Is Government oversight a permanent requirement for big businesses? As of now, it looks like that grand capitalistic vision of establishing one big corporation for the entire world will never work. There is too much at stake for such a company to fail. As long as sovereign nations exist to protect the citizens within the physical boundaries of a country, the global vision will be limited and strictly regulated. Currency values, exports, imports, tariffs, subsidies will be determined by the government policies rather than by the business interests.

In short, politics will trump economics always. Although economics is global all politics is local!
.

Physical frontiers of nature

Do you know that we can explain everything in the known world with only 12 particles and 4 forces!?

Six kinds of quarks (up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom) and six kinds of leptons (Electron, Mu, Tau, Electron neutrino, Mu neutrino, Tau neutrino) interact with each other through four forces, namely: gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces.

Physicists are trying to find a single, fundamental entity to these particles and unify the forces for many years with no solid result beyond this standard model of elementary particles. String theory with all the extra dimensions still remains inadequate.

For now we understand and can explain the world through the 12 fundamental particles and 4 kind of forces.

Deepavali surprise!

The benefit of being disorganized is that you are constantly surprising yourself!

Well. Back in 2007 during the India trip I bought a couple of dhotis for me. Of course it is not practical to wear a dhoti during winter months. Besides the opportunities to wear it outdoor is slim to none. But it serves as a nice at home dress in addition to pjs during summer months. I left one of those dhotis unopened behind my dresser and totally forgot about it until this morning. It is a tradition to celebrate Diwali with new dress. I had a shirt that I had picked up earlier for formal use. But didn't bother with buying new pants since I had one too many of them. But hooray... it was a great surprise to spot a new dhoti on Deepavali morning!

Happy Deepavali greetings to all.

LCROSS ready for impact on the south pole of moon

Oct 9th is the impact. Learn more from the live NASA feed.

On the Journey of Self Invention

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson divides life into eight developmental stages.

Stages of Life	Conflicts	Choices
Infancy	Basic Trust Vs Basic Mistrust	Hope or Withdrawal
Early Childhood	Autonomy Vs Shame, Doubt	Will or Compulsion
Play Age	Initiative Vs Guilt	Purpose or Inhibition
School Age	Industry Vs Inferiority	Competence or Inertia
Adolescence	Identity Vs Identity Confusion	Fidelity or Repudiation
Young Adulthood	Intimacy Vs Isolation	Love or Exclusivity
Adulthood	Generativity Vs Stagnation	Care or Rejectivity
Old Age	Integrity Vs Despair	Wisdom or Disdain

Erikson believed that we do not proceed to the next stage until each stages crisis has been satisfactorily resolved. Dr. Roger Gould states that in order to overcome the adaptational warp of the early life, one has to continually re-examine the defenses and assumptions. Feelings are memories of past behavior. When you sort them out and see what's current and what's left over, you can begin to use your thinking process to change your behavior. Withdrawal can be turned to hope, compulsion to will, inhibition to purpose and inertia to competence through exercise of memory and understanding. Becoming the kind of person you want to be is the ultimate act of free will !

-derived from the book "On Becoming a Leader" by Warren Bennis

All the way to Madurai

For sometime lately I have been toying with the idea of a adventurous journey to Madurai, my hometown in India from New York City and back. Sure, going to JFK by using public transportation could be adventurous but I am talking about a different kind of adventure - Riding a motorcycle.......all the way(Yeah, right...).

I came with this idea through several avenues - First I figured out that journeys have the capability of completely transforming people - we find examples throughout history. Only a journey changed Siddhartha into Buddha and Ernesto Guevara into Che Guevara. Even Mahatma Gandhi took a train journey to discover India. Hopefully a motorcycle journey will change me in similar ways. While this is on one hand, I also wanted to travel through whole of Europe stopping at historically important places - by 'historically' I mean WWII, of course. That travel could be on anything - But the freedom a motorcycle offers, particularly if it is off-road capable like the one I have, is unmatched by any other. Pack a couple of bags + tent + sleeping bag and you are ready to discover the world!!

With that said, let me speak about the places I want to see, the route I want to take etc. I have so far only planned the Europe part properly. Imagine I head out east from NYC to London on a plane and start my journey to Madurai from there. I would first ride to the beaches of Normandy where thousands of allied soldiers died on D-Day. Then I would go to Belgium tracing back the routes Guderian and Rommel took during the invasion of France. I definitely want to spend some time in Ardennes, particularly Bastogne where the 'Easy company' from 'Band of Brothers' and others fought so bravely in the winter of 1944. Then I would proceed to the Ludendorff bridge at Remagen, the only bridge intact that Patton's army managed to capture while trying to cross the Rhine. In Germany I would trace through the rise of Nazi party, and, of course, see the "Eagle's nest" at Berchtesgaden. Then I would proceed on to the eastern front, where lies the most important place of the entire European section - Stalingrad, now called Volgagrad. I would spend at least a week in this place where the bloodiest battle in history took place. It would be a privilege to keep a bottle of dirt collected from there. Along with a piece of metal I collected from a restored C-47 that actually dropped 101st Airborne (Band of brothers) on D-Day as well as Operation MarketGarden and also participated in Berlin airlift, I will keep this bottle on a showcase.

So far this is the plan - have to plan the rest of the route. Any suggestions? You may also write about any similar journey you always wanted to take.

Rare alignment - U.S. and Venezuela

In June, I wrote about the unraveling constitutional crisis in Honduras. Well, it has just got messier!

Strangely enough, U.S. and Venezuela find themselves on the same side, albeit for completely different reasons. U.S. wants to restore order and considers removing and extraditing a sitting President as a bad precedence and refuses to accept it as a legitimate move by the Honduran Congress, Supreme court and the Military. There is definitely a point in that view. Military reports to the President and cannot take orders from the Supreme Court or the Congress. President may need to be impeached by the Congress and removed from office. Not under the military gun based on a Supreme Court order in the middle of the night. The swift removal of the President from Power and the escorted expulsion from the Presidential palace and the country is chilling misuse of power.

Venezuela president on the other hand wants his buddy Mr. Zelaya to remain in power without any term limit just as himself is in his country. Mr. Zelaya earlier attempted to amend the constitution to eliminate the presidential term limit through a public referendum. That is disturbing in itself. Countries that are Republic allow Constitutional amendments only after discussion and debate of the elected representatives and through a ballot typically requiring two thirds majority to support any amendment. Honduras is a republic. Public Referendums only lead to tyranny of the masses. A country's Constitution cannot be changed based on a popularity contest or fickle public opinions.

In any case, Mr. Zelaya's move initiated all of what is unraveling now. He has returned back into the country and has taken refuge in the Brazilian embassy. From this diplomatic den he is inciting his supporters to agitate in the streets on his behalf. The sitting President for his part has promulgated curfews and other rules to restrain the public. It is never going to be easy to come out of this stalemate.

In June 1975, India went through similar crisis. On a bold judgment, Allahabad High Court ruled that the election of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as null and void. The rightful move by the Prime Minister should have been to step down and let the President conduct re-election on the constituency. Instead, Indira Gandhi used a rare provision in the Indian Constitution, Article 352 to declare National Emergency. Through this declaration the Executive branch instantly got overwhelming power. Power to detain and arrest anyone without any due process. Media was heavily censored and the Court system was severely undermined. The crisis came to an end after nearly two years in March 1977 when the general elections was conducted. The Congress Party led by Indira Gandhi lost the elections for the first time in Independent India.

Anytime the Executive branch grabs power, it is the first step to establishing martial law and dictatorial regimes. We have seen this many times over in Pakistan. Myanmar is a living example of a country ruled by military junta. Equatorial Guinea in the Central Africa has been ruled by two ruthless men from the same family since 1968. The ruling oligarchy of the Middle East is no stranger to the world.

In the U.S. wartime provision of the Constitution lend shift in power to the President. President Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus during civil war and President FDR curtailed civil liberties of the citizens of Japanese origin by moving them into the internment camps during WWII. Both these regrettable events were turned over after the war. If every country goes through stages of evolution to establish its norms as a sovereign nation, it is Honduras turn now.

Better explained!

Ever wondered what the natural logarithm, exponents (e), complex numbers, etc mean really?

Here is a fantastic site that explains it.

Eye of God

If the lengths of sides of a rectangle are in the golden ratio, then the rectangle is a golden rectangle. It is possible to divide a golden rectangle into a square and a golden rectangle. We could continue this process indefinitely, producing smaller and smaller golden rectangles. The point at which all the golden rectangles converge is referred to as the "Eye of God". We can magnify the figure but can never get to the 'Eye' using finite magnifications. If we connect all the vertices's, we form a logarithmic spiral that envelops the "Eye of God".

For the mathematically inclined...

An impressive turn around

My mom got the passport yesterday. That is within two weeks of application! I got to admit it is a very impressive turn around for passport re-issue. It takes about the same time in US. But the demand in India is more than 3 times that here. They must be doing something right in the back room. Kudos to that. Friendlier service would reduce the stress of the applicants. There are real problems with the public interface that needs to get addressed. Let's hope we get there sooner than later.

A -ve turned funny and +ve

Artist

If you use your hand, you are labor;
if you use your hand and mind, you are crafts person;
if you use your hand, mind and heart, you are an artist.

Cycle of Market Emotions

Imagination at work

Four principles of decision making

1. Only certainty is that there is no certainty.
2. Every decision is a matter of weighing probabilities.
3. Despite uncertainty we must decide and we must act.
4. We need to judge decisions not only on the results, but on how they were made.

"Reject absolute answers and recognize uncertainty. Weigh the probabilities. Don't let uncertainty paralyze you."

- 70th Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin. May 1999.

How to improve public service?

I have complained about the public service in India in my previous post. Now I want to propose some ideas and possible solutions to the problem. So here goes.

Understanding the problem is half the solution. Here are some questions for anyone who can make a difference in improving the interaction with public offices in India, if such individuals ever stumble upon this blog.

Goals
- Avoid/Reduce queuing
- Reduce turn around time for every customer to less than half hour in all public offices such as banks, electric/telephone utilities, train (reservation) stations, passport offices, etc.
- Help people who really need help.
- Handle elders, disabled, pregnant women, women with children as a priority.
- Empower people who can handle themselves.
- Behave courteously to all customers. Must have service with a smile. Indian public servants are notoriously uptight individuals.

Let's think in terms of some basic parameters to achieve these goals.

Understand Demand
Approximately how many people need to be serviced every day? If we can't estimate it based on the demographics, we should at least have a statistical number on the quantity. If that data doesn't exist yet, every regional office should start collecting that information. Count every single person who walks into the public office for service. It is important for every regional office to know the usual demand. Student interns such as NSS cadets can be used for such exercises.

Estimate the Cycle Time
The average time it takes for a customer to get in and out of the office. The goal is to reduce this time. Again, start recording the times. What is not measured cannot be improved.

Know the Capacity
Cycle time * number of work hours * number of office staff servicing the customers. This gives the maximum number of customers that can be serviced with the current staff level. If a single customer has to deal with multiple stations/staff to get the job done, individual station capacity should be estimated. Again, volunteers can help.

Know and control Utilisation
With a nominal 80% utilisation, how many customers can be served per day by the total number of staff in the office? This gives a more practical estimate of the capacity accounting for staff leave, late arrivals, lunch breaks, personal business time, etc.

Identify and eliminate Bottlenecks
Where do the incoming customers spend most of the time? Is it in getting the paper work filled up? Is it in deciding between the available choices? Is it in excessive internal handling time? Is it in the payment step? How can that be alleviated?

Conclusion
Once the above parameters are understood, I believe one of the common findings will be that our offices are generally under staffed. If most customers in the region (urban?) are educated and can handle themselves, automate the processes to delegate work to the customers. If most customers need a lot of help, invite volunteers, educated retirees like school teachers to help out the people in need. I am sure a lot of such people will come forward to help others. I see an opportunity for non-profit outfits to organize such efforts. Basically get help from the elements of the society to make life better for everyone.

Introduce some basic periodic training for the staff. They work to serve the people. Public servants should drop the feudal attitude. One effective way is to tie the customer feedback to the staff incentives and perks program. Institute such programs to encourage staff to change their behavior towards the public. Once people see benefit in checking their attitude, they will change quickly. The incentive need not be in terms of money. Invite sponsors from local businesses for discount coupons, cinema tickets, free meals, etc. It serves as an advertisement vehicle for local businesses and an enormous moral boost for the employees to win such awards by serving people with a smile.

So without requiring any increase in funding or staff level, things can be improved dramatically. Public offices should come forth to work closely with the NGOs to benefit from them and serve people better.

Of course, the first step is to recognize that wasting time unproductively waiting for mundane services is a problem. We should all expect, rather demand, better service from the public servants who are paid for by the tax payers. Refusing to understand that there is problem, asking for tolerance of inefficiencies, making excuses for the status quo, coloring the intentions of the messenger are only detrimental to improving the situation.

The insensitivity of the Indian bureaucracy

Yesterday, my mother had to go to the local passport office to have her passport renewed. She has had her current passport for 10 years and now needs a new passport to travel. I looked up the web site of the passport office, entered all her data to register for the visit and printed out application neatly. The prep went for a week to collect the supporting documents such as the voter's card, photos, copies of old passport, etc. My wife and kids accompanied her when the day came a little ahead of the appointment time at 9:30 AM.

There was a long line of people, a closed door with a rogue gate keeper peeking out to open the door for the appointment holders. This guy has no training whatsoever. He strictly insisted that only the applicant can go in. My wife tried to explain that my mom needs help with the application process and cannot handle it herself, only to fall in deaf ears. Once inside, my mother was made to wait in a queue, promptly ambushed by the impatient staff at the passport office and sent out after a couple of hours. Their reason was that she needed to show in the application the US address where she stayed a few months in the last year. Not only that they want address proof of that US address! How insane is that? My mom had no clue of what they were asking. There was no explanation or any courteous to a senior citizen. She had to leave the office in anguish after two hours of waiting in the madness of the passport office. My wife meanwhile argues with the gate keeper and finally makes her way in when mom was fed up and coming out. My wife goes in and finds out what they want. But because we filed the application online, there is no way to edit the application! There are "paid volunteers" inside the passport office sitting with a bunch of computers to register the application online right there. However, they cannot edit an existing application, because the website does not support it. So this will be a completely new registration. All that I did for a week is now thrown out and the guy takes the money to register a new application. Of course, there is a queue at every stage and long waiting in grueling hot sun. Most people don't even know that there is a wait counter where you have to take a ticket for your turn. People stand in the queue only to find out that they don't have a ticket when they are in the counter and promptly sent to the back of the line.

Meanwhile my kids are outside with the auto guy in the heat of the mid day. During the wait, my mom comes out and after another fight with the gate keeper gets the kids inside. You can see how duty bound the gate keeper is in his work not allowing a 6 yr old and a 3 yr old inside the passport office when their mom and grandma are inside. Anyway the ordeal comes to climax when they approach the counter to "file" the application, only to be told that their registration takes an hour to update before they can pay the fee. The time is now 1:30 PM; kids go bonkers in the heat and the hunger. Meanwhile a lot more applicants are kicked out the same way as my mom was without proper explanation, guidance or courtesy. Those who can afford go through the "volunteers" to get the job done. Others are clueless and wander talking to anyone who can point them in a direction. It is complete chaos. My wife decides at this time there is no point in waiting for the 'system to update' and decides to leave home. They all come home, have late lunch, get the kids to nap and go back around 3:00 PM. Apparently it was much better at that time after most of those poor applicants were rejected and sent home to continue with their ordeal for another day. My mom was able to pay the fee and get out of their. Will the passport come in the next month? Hope so. There is "police verification" even for renewals. So that could be interesting.

Genius Vs Team

No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary human beings perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each man's strength to help all the others perform. The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.
- Peter Drucker

Globalization Vs. Socialism - Part2

True, the first few instances of a state attempting to implement socialism ended up in disasters. Yeah I am talking about the erstwhile U.S.S.R and the "Rather Something republic of China". They both set off to implement the "dictatorship of the proletariat" but were only partially successful - they could only implement upto the "dictatorship" part! But elsewhere when implemented within the confines of a democratic system, with the state continuously tweaking it's socialist principles based on realities of the day, it did pay off. In India, the state owned railways system, subsidized for the poor, ran at loss for several decades, the loss compensated by tax money from people who could pay taxes. In general state owned public transportation system helped poor Indians a lot (by taxing rich Indians). Another good example would be the ban on exports of essential commodities, that the GOI enforces once in a while. This is about Govt. protecting poor people from unfair market dynamics. When the supply of essential commodities doesn't meet the combined demands of internal/external markets, there will be a tendency among suppliers to court external markets. This is when external markets are willing to pay a premium to get those commodities while poor locals can't compete with them. After all the essential commodities like rice and lentil weren't produced just by man-hours put in by farmers. They also used up some of nation's resources such as water and soil, all of which belong to the citizens. So it makes sense to give poor Indians the first chance to buy these essential commodities.

But imagine a hypothetical scenario where farmers in Vietnam are able to produce better qualitily rice and wheat, in higher quantities and export it to India at a price cheaper than the local suppliers can give at. If GOI moves to block this import then the local buyers are going to suffer due to higher prices. Furthermore the skills of local farmers won't grow, thanks to the absence of competition. This is certainly not good. A country should allow it's people to compete with other people in skills though it protects it's people from unfair trade conditions. In other words a country should distinguish between a fair compertition (of skills) and an unfair competition (of prices) while applying socialism. I am going to save the rest of my babble for Part3.

Funny bit

Truth is seldom kind

Jaswant’s incomplete truth

...The British had decided on Partition to serve their own strategic ends. On 29 March, 1945, after Viceroy Lord Wavell met Prime Minister Churchill in London he recorded: “He (Churchill) seems to favour partition of India into Pakistan, Hindustan and Princestan.” ...

...Jinnah’s key decisions between 1940 and 1946, including the demand for Pakistan in 1940, were taken after getting the nod from Churchill or Lord Linlithgow and Wavell, both Churchill’s admirers...

...Pandit Nehru was...thoroughly programmed by the British since his school days. His proximity to Lord Mountbatten has been recorded by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and historian Shashi Joshi among others...

Excerpts from the editorial of The Statesman.

Power of thought!

Circle of no life!

Do you have adversaries?

To govern is to choose,
To choose is to offend
To offend is to make adversaries.

Rethinking computing technology

Artificial brain in 10 years?

Cult Math

Here is an interesting math that I came across recently on one of the blogs. There are many religious, "scientific" gurus, yogics and cult leaders mostly from India and some from other parts of the world. The basic instrument they all use to spread and capture their audience is the same. The following algebra explains that.

If X = Those who have not tried the cult,
And Y = Those who have tried cult and BUY it,
And Z = Those who have tried cult and DON'T BUY it,
And Q = (Y+Z)*#yrs practiced = Those who tried the cult, bought it, practiced it for years, became dis-illusioned and dispensed of it....

According to those in the Y group
Y > X ( cult-ies are better than X and must find and SAVE them)
Y > Z ( cult-ies are better and more enlightened than Z)
Y > Q ( cult-ies that stay the course and not question the cult are more advanced than ex-cult-ies)

Therefore:
Y = Know it all - pseudo-enlightened
X = Ignorant
Z = Ego with wall around them
Q = X*Z (Ego times ignorance)

Y will always win the argument, will win the most toys and achieve the highest bliss. Everyone else is X, Z or Q.

And that is the definition of being brain washed!

Anything to Declare?

Yeah, don't go to England!!* Just kidding. It was one of the most memorable trips. Here is what I did in UK.

London:
I spent the first two days in London. As far as the city is concerned it is as good as Chennai and in some aspects Chennai looks better - I am not joking. If you take the tower bridge out of London, there is nothing much to tell you it is London. Buckingham palace was disappointingly plain. I wasn't expecting a mysore palace but still... Then there is the Tower of London which has some nice history attached to it. But beyond this facade there are two good museums - the British museum, which is the best museum I have ever seen and the maritime museum in Greenwich (pronounced Grenitch for some reason). British museum is simply a display of loots from Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China during the "glorious past" of Britain. They have literally hundreds of relics and artifacts from the pyramids of Egypt and sometimes even entire temples brought piecemeal from Greece. For us it is one place where you can see a lot of archealogical stuff from all known civilizations. The maritime museum explores the history of human exploration of far away places in high seas. If you are interested in history these are the places to see.

Bath:
The moment you are out of London though, you are in a completely different place. The English countryside deserves to be praised. Miles after miles of rolling meadows and farmlands make for a splendid drive. I think 90% of UKs population lives in London! - Except for the occasional fences there is little evidence that people live in these places. Bath is an ancient city that still contains remains of Britain's Roman past. They call it Bath because that is where Roman's took bath. In the rest of the places they simply used perfumes!..... I am just joking. Bath is called so because it has natural hot springs. The pagan romans made a pond out of it and constructed a temple next to it for the Goddess "Minerva", who is the healing God. The idea was that if you took bath in that pond your disease will go away. After Romans turned to christianity they constructed churches, remains of which still exist. Thus it is a 2000 year old city which contains both churches and pagan temples. Feels good to just walk around and absorb the history. I vowed to come back and spend a week there. No wonder "Lonely planet" asserts that if there is only one city you would see in UK, it should be Bath. So go there.

Blenheim palace:

This is the birthplace of Winston Churchill, the great and only leader from UK! His great great grand daddy, John Churchill was awarded by the Queen this 300 acre odd place along with 240,000 pounds as a generous gift for defeating the French in one of those perpetual battles between them. People's tax money well spent. Someone said the residents today live on the earnings that visitor's offer to see the place. Apparently Indians do not work for free any more.

Warwick Castle:

One of Britain's better maintained castles. Climb 500 narrow steps to the top of one of the towers and you can see a staggering view of the rest of the castle and the landscape of Warwickshire. Or you could simply look at the photograph here. I relished on the strategy with which the castle was built. Every tower, every room had a certain functionality. It would take an entirely different post to discuss about them all. But I would like to mention something I heard from the guide about laying siege to a castle. Apparently the besiegers would use big sling shots to throw chemicals that would create eye irritating fumes and dead animals/ human refuse to spread disease among other things in an attempt to obtain a surrender without have to break through the mighty walls of the castle. Hmm...so chemical and biological warfare aren't new after all.

Chatsworth house:
And then an 'out of this world', beautiful stately house - this time it belongs to the Duck of Derbyshire....or rather the Duke of Derbyshire (if you have seen Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven'). A walk along the brook will make anyone want to write a poem. It would be very hard to describe the beauty of this place. So, I am simply posting a picture of it.

Edinburgh, Scotland:

Edinburgh was the most historic looking city in UK that I visited. Edinburgh castle was the best. Built on top of a hill it offers a view of the north sea along with the entire city of Edinburgh. This castle played a main part in the Scottish battle of independence. If any one of you remember Robert, the Bruce (No one can beat me seven times in a row), one of the greatest Scottish generals, he wrestled this castle back from the English.

Lake District:

This is the most beautiful national park I have ever seen. It has a lot of hills of different shades of green with large lakes littered among them. I was going to spend only one day there and move on to Cambridge. But the moment I saw it on the first light of the day (I reached there when it was dark as hell), I said, "Screw Cambridge". It was that beautiful. You could easily spend a week there. And I will, sometime in the future. It is a perfect place for honeymooners for sure.

Roads:

Yep, the roads of UK need a special mentioning. I wont be doing them Justice if I simply said they were narrow. If you drove a small car like VW Golf or Maruti 800, you would feel like you were driving a lorry. You could smell the paint of the car that crosses you on the opposite direction. As for the shoulder there is none whatsoever. Right were the side of the road ends they have stacked sharp shapeless black stones to remind you were the road ends! If you go to your left a little more than you should, you will not only puncture your tires, but you will also get a nice design on the otherwise plain looking side of your car. So then this is the British version of a rumble strip. If this isn't enough, there is another dimension to these roads. The British haven't heard of a simple geometrical instrument called "the ruler". Roads, even in desolate open lands, looked like they had a strand of spaghetti for inspiration. In US, car manuals say that after a certain thousand miles you have to change the tires or the brakes or the timing belt. I was going through my car manual to see if there was any mentioning of changing the steering wheel! There wasn't, but there should have been. Remember the ridiculous car driving scenes from old movies where the driver is constantly turning the steering either way? That is exactly how you will drive on a UK road.

P.S. That dialog is from "Snatch". You can't miss that movie.